Parks on Tap (Pop-Up Beer Garden)
2016-09-08 17:00 - 22:00, 2016-09-09 13:00 - 23:00, 2016-09-10 13:00 - 23:00, 2016-09-11 12:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
The Fairmount Water Works is proud to be one of the sites of “Parks on Tap”, a mobile beer garden sponsored by Fairmount Park Conservancy and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.
Come enjoy beer samplings, games, live music, and more.
Park Events

9/7 Indego Bike Share 5 to 9 pm | Indego will be providing unlimited bike parking at a virtual pop-up station right near Fairmount Water Works
9/10 Maha Yoga at Parks on Tap 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Pay What You Can
9/10 Indego Bike Share 5 to 9 pm | Indego will be providing unlimited bike parking at a virtual pop-up station right near Fairmount Water Works

Indego Station
Indego will be providing unlimited bike parking during select times of Parks on Tap at a virtual pop-up station right near Fairmount Water Works – click here for a schedule and details!
FWW-Sponsored Events
Experience FWW’s hands-on Science Saturday and Coast Day 2016 activities, and Sunday Cinema feature, “Oceans”. Melissa D’Agostino’s URBAN SEA exhibit will also be on display that week here at the Fairmount Water Works.
Learn more about Parks on Tap here.

Coast Day 2016
2016-09-10 11:00 - 16:00
Discover all that Pennsylvania’s coast has to boast at Pennsylvania Coast Day. This free festival will take place at Walnut Plaza (Columbus Avenue at Walnut Street) on Penn’s Landing on September 10, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Visitors to Pennsylvania Coast Day will enjoy:

Free boat rides and tours*
Free rowboating or swan pedal boating
Remote-controlled model ship races
Free T-shirts and prizes
Face painting
Arts and crafts
Exhibitors

Ride a free, round-trip shuttle to the Fairmount Water Works at the Schuylkill waterfront. Here, you can:

See live mussel hatchery demonstrations
Compete in the Philly Fun Fishing Fest early that morning;
Experience hands-on activities as a part of our Science Saturday program.
Explore interactive exhibits inside the historic Fairmount Water Works.

…and more.
*Free boat ride for the first 500 people.
Check back regularly for event updates!

Family Tour w/ Let's Go Outdoors
2016-09-10 13:00 - 14:00, 2016-09-17 13:00 - 14:00, 2016-10-01 13:00 - 14:00, 2016-10-08 13:00 - 14:00
Join Let’s Go Outdoors for a general family-friendly tour of the Fairmount Water Works!
Learn about amazing grounds outside of the historic site, including the Fishway Dam, then head inside for a guided orientation to “Water in our World” and watch a 15-minute film about the building’s important role in Philadelphia’s history. Let’s Go Outdoors inspires an appreciation for the outdoors through education and recreation programming, especially among people of color and those that live in city communities.
After the tour, stick around for our weekly Science Saturday activity that starts at 2pm.
The tour is FREE, but registration is required, as space is limited.

Science Saturday: "Ecology Under Wraps: Ecosystems and Terrariums"
2016-09-10 14:00 - 16:00, 2016-09-17 14:00 - 16:00, 2016-09-24 14:00 - 16:00
Drop in every Saturday between 2-4 pm, and together, we’ll explore different aspects of our environment during fun and interactive sessions in our water lab.
The Schuylkill River ecosystem is an interrelationship of water, earth, plants and animals. Learn about the ecology of the area around the Fairmount Water Works and build your own miniature ecosystem in a bottle. VISITORS ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING THEIR OWN CONTAINER to create a terrarium in.

Sunday Cinema: "Oceans"
2016-09-11 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-09-11 15:00 - 17:00, 2016-09-18 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-09-18 15:00 - 17:00, 2016-09-25 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-09-25 15:00 - 17:00
Join us every Sunday afternoon for Sunday Cinema – a free series featuring movies and documentaries that surround a water theme. It’s a great family-friendly event, and we’ll show a different movie every month. (Film selection subject to change.)
“Oceans”: An ecological drama/documentary, filmed throughout the globe. Part thriller, part meditation on the vanishing wonders of the sub-aquatic world.

"Falling Waters: The Legacy of the Schuylkill Navigation"
2016-09-15 - 2016-12-30
Falling Waters: The Legacy of the Schuylkill Navigation
A Culture & Conversation Exhibit by Sandy Sorlien
On exhibit in our Media Room and stairwell until December 30, 2016, during regular hours.
Closing Reception: Thursday December 29, 5:30-7 PM, Gallery Talk 6:15

About the Exhibit
No human endeavor has had a greater influence on the Schuylkill River than its 19th century network of dams. Yet residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania today may know little about the Schuylkill Navigation, as most of its infrastructure is gone. There were once 32 dams, 46 miles of slackwater pools, 62 miles of canals, and 120 locks.
Constructed from 1816-1828 to tame the wild river, the privately-owned system extended 108 miles from Fairmount to Port Carbon. Thus began a long period of human dominance of the river for our own purposes: transportation, commerce, power, and recreation. Anthracite coal, other raw materials, and finished goods were carried on barges over this system, literally fueling the Industrial Revolution in the Schuylkill Valley. It brought numerous factory boom towns like Norristown, Conshohocken, and Manayunk. Unfortunately, with this development came heavy pollution of Philadelphia’s drinking water source. Finally in 1947-51, our state and federal government accomplished a massive cleanup, the Schuylkill River Project, dredging coal silt from the river and largely restoring its flow.
Most of the infrastructure of the Schuylkill Navigation was demolished. But there are four remaining navigation dams, two desilting dams, two watered canals, one working lock, and numerous dam abutments, lock ruins, canal traces, and silt impoundment basins. Some remnants are buried or overgrown or blocked by railways. In 2013, photographer Sandy Sorlien began looking for them.
At the 200th anniversary of the Schuylkill Navigation, this exhibition represents the first three years of Sandy’s ongoing quest to photograph all 32 dam sites on her native river.
“Falling Waters” will be on display at the Fairmount Water Works from September 15 – December 31, 2016. (The gallery is occasionally used for private events. Calling ahead is suggested.)
About the Artist
Sandy Sorlien is a photographer, neighborhood planner, and watershed educator. Her photographs are in the collections of numerous institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Michener Museum, and Haverford College. Since 2012 Sandy has been a contractor at the Fairmount Water Works, the education arm of Philadelphia Water. She has developed several upriver dam-related programs, including the Falling Waters tour series and the Schuylkill Dam Series geocaches. She was born and raised in the Schuylkill River watershed and lives in Roxborough near the Manayunk Canal. Sandy rows out of Bachelors Barge Club on Boathouse Row, and watches carefully for herons, kingfishers, and otters – all biological indicators of a healthy river.
About Culture & Conversation
Using art as the platform, Culture & Conversation prompts meaningful, thought-provoking dialogue about our environment.

Urban Sea Exhibit by Melissa D’Agostino
2016-09-26 16:00 - 19:00, 2016-09-27 16:00 - 19:00, 2016-09-28 16:00 - 19:00, 2016-09-29 16:00 - 19:00
URBAN SEA, a site-specific textile installation and interactive experience byMelissa D’Agostino, inspires conversation about the river’s historic role as a water mass and its future evolution based on the health of our watershed systems. Engineered to unfurl alongside the river between six of the historic pavilion columns, URBAN SEA will showcase 60 yards of silk organza fabric hand-dyed by the artist’s itajime technique of patterned vertical lines.

Viewers will see the one of a kind patterned tapestries blowing with the breeze, creating the billowing waves of an URBAN SEA.
URBAN SEA will be on display from Monday, September 26 through Thursday, September 29. Exhibit times are as follows (under the FWW Pavilion):

Monday (4pm – 7pm)
Tuesday (4pm – 7pm)
Wednesday (4pm – 7pm)
Thursday (4pm – 7pm)

Throughout the exhibit, D’Agostino invites visitors to express their own thoughts of the experience at a poetry desk and drawing table. She’s also collaborated with a local letterpress maker to develop a commemorative card for URBAN SEA featuring a poem and drawing by the artist, as a special gift for each viewer to remember and share their experience of the installation.

Science Saturday: "Seeing Red (and Yellow and Orange) in the Fall"
2016-10-01 14:00 - 16:00, 2016-10-08 14:00 - 16:00
Drop in every Saturday between 2-4 pm, and together, we’ll explore different aspects of our environment during fun and interactive sessions in our water lab.
Do you wonder why leaves are green in the spring and summer, but change to red, yellow and orange in the fall? Investigate the different colored pigments in leaves, identify different leaves, and perform an experiment to show how one color is really made up of many different colors.

Sunday Cinema: "A Bug's Life"
2016-10-02 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-10-02 15:00 - 17:00, 2016-10-09 13:00 - 15:00, 2016-10-09 15:00 - 17:00
Join us every Sunday afternoon for Sunday Cinema – a free series featuring movies and documentaries that surround a water theme. It’s a great family-friendly event, and we’ll show a different movie every month. (Film selection subject to change.)
“A Bug’s Life”: A misfit ant, looking for “warriors” to save his colony from greedy grasshoppers, recruits a group of bugs that turn out to be an inept circus troupe.

Mommy and Minnow, Father and Fry: I Spy...
2016-10-07 10:00 - 11:00
Calling Moms, Dads, and/or Caregivers! Visit Fairmount Waters Works with your preschooler(s) for Week 1 of our Mommy and Minnow, Father and Fry, 5-week program series!
Week 1’s theme is “I Spy…”, an adventure in exploring the river/water with our sense of sight!
Using water themes and river connection lessons, your preschooler(s), along with yourself, will have fun through sensory, movement, creative and generic play activities. These popular sessions fill quickly(!) and incorporate toddler/pre-k journaling for early school-based learning techniques.
To register, please visit: Mommy and Minnow, Father and Fry
